5 ms·
This article is interesting as it's from the perspective of a major exporter, India, (rather than a commodities trader): https://indianexpress.com/article/bus
by photochemsyn 4y ago
This article is interesting as it's from the perspective of a major exporter, India, (rather than a commodities trader):
https://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/india-rice-export-curbs-price-stability-supply-8462016/ https://indianexpress.com/article/business/economy/india-ric...
> "“We can’t resume broken rice exports just because somebody in China or any other country wants it as a raw material to make ethanol or cattle feed. We’ll rather prefer our domestic industry consuming it... We don’t want to take a chance. We’ve limited wheat stocks but ample rice stocks, which we can use if the weather throws any big surprises."
Incidentally, much of the research into how rice production responds to rising CO2 and rising global temperatures was based on greenhouse studies in which CO2 and temperate was artificially manipulated, for example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751296/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6751296/
However, it's turning out that the increasingly random and extreme incidences of droughts and floods is what's impacting agricultural production the most. India's approach seems the most rational: build bigger domestic buffers against future uncertainties.
Also, the future of biofuels and meat production looks quite poor, as crop production is going to be needed to feed humans directly.
- omeid2 4y agoA lot of livestock feed is produced in environments where rice or wheat is out of question.
- neovialogistics 4y agoWheat can reliably grow pretty much anywhere except nonirrigated clearcut former jungle, it's just not economically competitive (on the global market) when it has to be harvested from any kind of sloped terrain.
- littlestymaar 4y agoIt used to be the case, when cattle was grazing hills too steep for culture (without terraces at least). But nowadays, most cattle is fed from cultivated grains instead of grazing.
- akiselev 4y agoDo you have a source on that? My understanding is that most cattle are finished on grain but most of that feed is distillers grains [1], which is an industrial waste from ethanol and biofuel production. The majority of cattle spend most of their lives brackgrounding [2] in pasture. They're not put on the feedlots until the last six or so months of their life to fatten them up for butchering. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backgrounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backgrounding
- chrisco255 4y agoIt's not even true that most cattle are finished on grain. Feed lots utilize hay and silage as often as grain.
- nomel 4y agoAnd sometimes candy corn [1]. [1] https://www.nifa.usda.gov/feeding-candy-cattle-helps-producers-save-cash https://www.nifa.usda.gov/feeding-candy-cattle-helps-produce...
- chrisco255 4y agoI used to own a horse and would regularly feed her sugar cubes. I guess that works too!
- Broken_Hippo 4y agoWhich I wholeheartedly support. I worked as seasonal help in a local chocolate and candy factory. Any chocolate not fit for sale for whatever reason went to sheep (and possibly pigs?) It is a good way to lessen food waste.
- littlestymaar 4y agoFrom the perspective of this discussion, hay and silage are indistinguishable from grain: if you can grow and harvest them, you could have make human food directly off that land.
- selimthegrim 4y agoThe system of domestic buffers existed before for public distribution system inherited from British in both India and Pakistan who were told to get rid of it by IMF. Pakistan did so with alacrity in 80s but still has utility stores at province level IIRC.
- ren_engineer 4y agoI mean this is the whole point of the US ethanol industry and farm subsidies in general(that many people complain about online), better to have people growing too much corn than not having enough. If the US did have some drought or disaster that damaged a huge amount of crops, we just stop making ethanol and use the stockpiles and reduced crop to feed ourselves. In the meantime we use the excess for ethanol production, even if it's technically a net loss
- quantum_magpie 4y agoAren't ethanol, animal feed, and human food corn all separate, non-interchangeable species? Usually ethanol stuff and animal feed stock are completely inedible, at least in my EU country.
- stevehawk 4y agomight be separate, non-interchangeable species (I don't know) but they require the same farmers, equipment, logistics, etc, to be in place and as everyone learned the last few years those things don't just scale up and down like latest cloud tech here.
- cnntth 4y agoThe land is interchangeable, and 'human food corn' encompasses a lot more than just corn eaten directly by humans. Almost every processed food in the US uses some corn derived product; and animal feed is still part of the supply chain for human food.
- dividedbyzero 4y agoI'm not sure how that works with corn, but quite a few things that aren't fit for human consumption in times of plenty are quite edible in a famine, or can be made so.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoI don't think it's that but that most human digestive systems will catastrophically fail trying to digest ethanol-corn or animal feed-corn.
- feedsmgmt 4y agoI hope that areas producing a lot of cotton and tobacco have strong enough ethics to switch to food producion to help those most in need rather than those seeking luxuries.